Is Self-Preservation a healthy perk for the game?
Self-Preservation: Whenever another Survivor is hooked, you gain Elusive for 30 s.
I don’t really know how this is a healthy perk for DBD. It hides you for 30 s when someone else gets hooked so it doesn’t fight against tunneling or camping.
The experiences as Survivor and Killer I had with Self-Preservation opened my eyes: It’s really unhealthy for the game.
Survivor Exp: I was in chaos shuffle against a ghoul on Iri of crows. Because the ghoul played well, he never found me because he got hook after hook and I was 70% of the match Elusive and got out by hatch. After the match I saw that the ghoul got BBQ and it basically Self-Preservation made me immune to it, so the entire game was for me doing 2,5 gens in the distance and then hatch, no chase wich is the fun part of this game … a boring experience.
Killer Exp: I played ghoul on Lerys and used Friends till the end, I downed someone who wasn’t the obsession and hooked him/her. I didn’t saw my obsession, the entire game, on no hook, my perk was useless. After the game was over I saw that my obsession had Self-Preservation.
And this two examples show what Self-Preservation counters: Hook=Information … mainly BBQ, Friends till the end and Alien instinct (except the oblivious part). But what this perks have in common: They are healthy for the game.
Why? Because they give you survivors auras when you hook someone, wich is there to lead the killer away form the hook to chase someone else, and Self-Preservation spits on that.
If I don’t see auras from bbq on a hook that must mean all survivors are nearby and I have to stay closer to the hook right? Thats one of the bad effects Self-Preservation can have.
Another bad effect is that killers not using this perk slots for the mentioned perks and go back and put in more slowdown since slowdown is the most reliable killer perk type at the moment.
It’s also a soft counter against Pain res, No way out and Dark embrace since it hides you for so long and might prevent the killer of finding you. And these perks encourage to 4 hook wich would be healthy for the game.
Self-Preservation also plays into the hand of survivors who play this „I let my team die and hatch escape with key“ playstyle since it hides them from the mentioned aura perks and makes them 30 s extremely stealthy again again and again while their team dies (also left behind and sole survivor are stupid because of this too).
In general I hate the idea of elusive (elusive on unhook is fine though). Aura perks just show killer directions to go and counter stealthy survivors, but if we get more and more elusive perks, killer won’t pick aura perks because of that and bring more gen slowdown.
In conclusion this perk only counters directly healthy perks (bbq ect) and supports a stealthy playstyle …
I don’t see how this perk is healthy for DBD.
In my opinion they just should revert is to what is was (with elusive because that’s what is basically was): If a survivor gets hit nearby you get elusive. Because it hides you and encourages the killer to pick up the downed survivor instead of slugging and going after you. I know I said I hate elusive, but ist fine in specific scenarios an unhook or this here because in them it fight against slugging and tunneling.
Comments
this can be quite nasty when unhooking with it as well, why? NO SCRATCH MARKS. you will just be standing there at the hook wondereing how tf this guy got unhooked when you didint see anyone. and you cant track them down either due to no scratch marks from both
If you see the unhooked person and the unhooker got elusive from that it encourages to tunnel too. Good point
yeah it kinda does because if you cant find the guy who unhooked, of course your gonna go for the injured person who was just unhooked and has a shorter elusive time
Your logic has a flaw in it which is while you can consider chase the fun part of the game which is fine it isn't the objective of the game. It sounds like from your example you got tremendous value from it being able to do almost 3 gens uninterrupted while it didn't actually prevent the ghoul from winning cuz you were still forced to get hatch so there didn't seem to be anything unfair in that interaction and if the ghoul over relies on BBQ that's on them.
Also let us not confuse a perk being considered healthy for the game like pain res and no way out with you must let it get value. They're still perks of the killer trying to well kill you and you should still try to counter it as much as you can and survive.
My examples: Yeah but while doing the 2 gens my entire team died. If i wouldnt had have that perk he might have had the opportunity to chase me and my team would have the chance to recover a bit. And the ghoul didn’t over relay on bbq it was chaos shuffle wich opened my eyes on how bad designed Self-Preservation actually is. The fact a single perk made me unfindable while my entire team dies and I profit form it is ridiculous.
For chase not being an objective, thats wrong: The killer has to chase his objective wich are the survivors and distracting the killer so everyone else can do gens or heal is an objective of survivors too.
Pain res and No way out have a healthy design: 4 hooking to collect those advantages, you still need to do something to activate them, wich also shows another thing bad thing about Self-Preservation, you can equip it and it’s brained free since you as the user dont have to do anything to activate it. And since you didn’t had anything against 90% of my points on how badly designed Self-Preservation is, then I guess you had no real argument to defend the perk.
Honestly your team was probably always gonna die if they can't loop a ghoul and it was partially your fault not because you had self-preservation but because you didn't leverage it to get stealth saves.
And no the killer has to chase and find survivors yes but survivors should put off that chase as long as possible to buy even more time, if you just run to the killer you're throwing.
Also you just described most survivor perks, you either don't have to do anything to activate them or the killer has to do something to activate them so I don't understanding singling out self-preservation for this.
I think we’re getting away from my actual point by discussing whether my team was “going to die anyway” or whether I could have used Self-Preservation for stealth saves.
I’m not arguing that Self-Preservation guarantees a win or that I personally couldn’t have used it better. I’m arguing about what the perk incentivizes and what its effect does to the Killer’s information.
If my team is getting hooked repeatedly and Self-Preservation repeatedly makes me immune to hook-based aura information, then I can remain outside the Killer’s attention while my teammates take the pressure. Whether my teammates were eventually going to die anyway doesn’t really address whether that is a healthy gameplay pattern.
And I agree with you that Survivors shouldn’t run toward the Killer for no reason. The point isn’t that Survivors should constantly seek chase. The point is that taking chase, extending a chase, rescuing, healing and creating pressure relief for your teammates are all important parts of Survivor teamplay. Stealth is also legitimate, but I think there’s a difference between choosing stealth and having a perk repeatedly make you extremely difficult to locate specifically whenever your teammates are hooked.
As for “most Survivor perks are passive,” I don’t think that’s the relevant distinction.
My problem isn’t simply that Self-Preservation is passive. It’s that its passive effect is:
A passive healing perk, for example, doesn’t suppress the Killer’s information after a hook. Self-Preservation does.
That’s why I’m singling it out.
And I’m not saying BBQ, Pain Res, No Way Out, etc. should be guaranteed value. Survivors should obviously counter Killer perks. My argument is that there’s a difference between “this perk has a counter” and “this counter creates a healthy gameplay pattern.”
My concern is that Self-Preservation can turn the hook → information → leave hook → chase another Survivor cycle into hook → no useful information → continue struggling to locate the stealthy Survivor → proxy camping
That’s one of the interactions I think that are problematic.
If you disagree with that, that’s completely fair, but then I’d rather discuss whether that particular interaction is healthy than whether my teammates were doomed anyway or whether I personally could have used the perk differently.
But how you use the perk is the crux of the issue. If you just rat with it and your team isn't good in chase then ofc that's gonna go poorly. If your issue is that you can do that in the first place that's kinda just the nature of stealth perks it's hard to design a stealth perk that's actually good that doesn't do that outside of like maybe Iron Will.
Also I think it's false framing to suggest it's causing unhealthy gameplay when we had this debate with distortion. People said tunneling would stop if we just nerfed Distortion that they were just ratting and letting their teams die cuz the killer was then "forced" to tunnel. Well we nerfed Distortion it's usage plummeted and .…tunneling still happened, a lot.
We kinda have to realize DBD in theory and DBD in practice are not the same thing. If a killer wants to tunnel they're going to because getting one person out of the game as quickly as possible creates the most pressure for them if they are actually trying to win. Even if you don't have self-preservation there's no actual guarantee the ghoul goes for you when you have no hook states and others are on death hook because even if they can see you the incentive is low outside of pressuring whatever gen you're working on.
I think you're still missing the main point of my original post, because most of your response is addressing things I wasn't actually arguing.
I never claimed Self-Preservation causes tunneling, that removing it would stop tunneling, or that the Ghoul was somehow forced to chase me because BBQ showed my aura. The Distortion example therefore doesn't really address my argument. I'm not arguing about whether Killers will tunnel if they have less information; I'm arguing about what Self-Preservation does to the specific hook → information → leave the hook → next chase interaction.
The same goes for whether my team was “always going to die” or whether I should have used Self-Preservation for stealth saves. That's discussing how I personally used the perk in one match rather than the design issue I'm pointing out.
My original post made several specific points that I don't think you've really addressed:
You haven't really argued against those points. Instead, the discussion has mostly become “tunneling would still happen,” “your team might have died anyway,” and “stealth perks naturally allow ratting.”
I agree with some of those statements. They just don't disprove what I'm arguing.
I'm not saying stealth is inherently unhealthy. I'm not saying Survivors shouldn't counter Killer perks. I'm not saying BBQ should always get value. And I'm not saying Self-Preservation guarantees an escape.
I'm saying that the particular way Self-Preservation provides stealth—automatically and repeatedly after someone else gets hooked, while specifically suppressing information that is designed to direct the Killer toward another chase—is what I consider unhealthy.
If you have real arguments yourself why Self-Preservation isn’t unhealthy I’m open for that, but what you have said so far didn’t deny any of my points.
I haven't really addressed it cuz I don't think any of them are really that interesting?
1. As I've said a bunch of perks work this way I don't know why we're singling out self-preservation
2. I just don't think this is an issue?
3. Perks can be countered by other perks yes, kinda the point of stealth perks in the first place.
4. I just disagree with this. I think we're too obsessed with "healthy" in DBD and it gets thrown around way too much. Aura perks are there to give the killer an advantage they're not they're to be "healthy".
5. If a killer camps they were probably gonna do that anyway. The idea that you have to dangle your aura in front of the killer or they'll just camp is kinda childish to me. Like "tell me where to go next or I'm taking my ball and going home" type ish.
6. Again this is the nature of stealth perks. We have been dealing with urban evasioning around the map since 2016. Those types of players will exist regardless.
7. Old self-preservation had a -10% use rate you'd basically kill the perk if you went back to this.
I think overall I'm just more okay with some perks being strong? if we focused on everything being "healthy" and promoting a "fair playstyle" we would have a very sanitized boring game. Self-preservation isn't actively breaking anything so it's fine imo.
And a Dbd thats more healthy would be killers going for multiple hooks, perks not giving you everything for free. Self-Preservation just spits on that and says „screw you im invisible just go for my teammates I’ll wait with my key with left behind“
We're gonna go in circles like this so I'll just say I know you're wrong because I play killer. You give me aura and I can know it won't be blocked I am going to use it to help me tunnel and yes even BBQ because just because I can see everyone doesn't mean I'm going to go after everyone and not just ping pong between two people to get someone out as quickly as possible. You put on self-preservation all of a sudden maybe I can't do that so how unhealthy is that really?
Or in a locker? Because it's a very easy perk to figure out a killer has, and has a counter that people with 100 hours will know. SP just has the survivor skipping the locker if you don't want to be seen on your gen.
It's not like there's only two choices in perks, aura and anti-gen. Whispers counters SP and is an info perk. So does Infectious. SP also only works on post-hook aura. I generally run two aura and one aura add-on and though I see this perk often enough it rarely gives me trouble. And when I do find someone with no scratch marks after a hook (with my eyes) I immediately recognize the perk and keep it in mind. Just like decent survivors are expected to identify and counter certain killer perks, killers need to do the same. You can't just expect your perks to do all the work for you.
I play lots of killer myself and I have to say you sound like you have 10 hours.How can you get aura form bbq and tunnel when you hooked another survivor? You just saying I’m wrong without naming good points or saying it’s not on issue in my games.
2. Just like I said as killer you can’t afford to run specific perks to counter a singular survivor perks, like whispers and whispers doesn’t give you the exact position. And just because it doesn’t give you trouble doesn’t mean it’s ok. I could simple say I rarely saw old Sprintburst or vigil so it was fine before the nerf wich I know it wasn’t. I already named enough situations, experience and arguments why I think this is an unhealthy perk.
And for you in my other post you only had survivor sided opinions despite saying you play killer, wich i don’t believe when you say killers deserve a 30 s stun after hitting a surv on hook. Even on a YouTube channel I watch where he goes over Dbd forum posts the Stuber calls your comments wrong and that you are a not a killer player for what you said. Don’t take it personally but i won’t respond to your arguments since when I always try the only argument is a „but this“ or „lightborn is unfair“.
Try 6k. And if you can't comprehend the concept of looking for a specific aura every time you activate BBQ I can't help you with that.
still impossible to tunnel with bbq since you hook person a then hook person b to find person a again and it isn’t tunneling because you hooked someone else. But thats not the topic of this post.
So they waste a few seconds getting into a locker then they just get back on their gen. The scratch marks don't matter much if you're just blindy following aura because you aren't going to their gen anyway. They'll sit there in peace either way.
No one is running things to counter a single perk. They run things that counter multiple perks. Mindbreaker, Infectious, Whispers. You can counter a bunch of perks at once with perks like that. SP isn't strong enough or popular enough to even consider bringing a perk just to counter it. You can also run one of a zillion other aura perks that don't just proc after hooks.
Did I say I didn't see this perk? I do see it. It's just not that big of an issue if you have some gamesense, as well as eyes and ears. SB and Vigil were an issue.
Ah that's hilarious you're listening to that biased clickbaity clown. I think that tells me all I need to know. I play killer every day, probably far more than you, but believe what's convenient for you.
Like always not going on my points, not thinking on my explanation why the perk design is unhealthy and promotes bad playstyles and only counters healthy perks like bbq. Mindbreaker doesn’t counter Self-Preservation and infectious only works, on downing another survivor wich encourages slugging and I already explained whispers. And your experience isn’t mine, in my cases like my ghoul game this single perk shuttled down my entire build.
Well have fun playing against clueless solo q survivors all day while having a survivor sided mindset and getting destroyed on YouTube by a „Clown“.
You said it countered Friends, not your whole build. And if your whole build is countered by a single perk maybe you shouldn't have such a single-minded build. And it only counters Friends until the obsession changes. It's not unhealthy for stealth to exist. What is unhealthy is that killers are hard crutching on an endless amount of aura perks and add-ons and can't cope if they get out stealthed. Sorry you couldn't just mindlessly fling yourself across with the most skill-less killer every time you saw yellow for one match. You called this other person a 10 hour player but if you're crutching this hard on your perks and can't function without them it sounds like you're the one that's weak at macro.
But yeah, I play 100-300 killer matches a month and win most of them but it's all clueless soloqers cause that's totally how matchmaking works.
And again no arguments against my main points on SP. And crunching on aura, I still got 2 kills because I they had good survivors. Using aura builds instead of 4 gen slowdowns what you normally need against good teams (I know you don’t face them like I do) isn’t crunching on perks. But you exposed yourself with the ghoul sentence. It’s not topic of this post but ghoul takes more skill than you think, first hit is easy but cut off are precise. And only entitled survivors call ghoul a skill less amend easy. Calling killer crunching on auras (while there are better options) while survivors crutch on the same 5 perks I see every game is truely the opinion of someone who plays 10 seconds a day. But playing so much Dbd and being unaware of any of this, I feel sorry for you.
Ok
I'm so bad and play so little killer that I've essentially won all my matches these last 30 days. You referred to yourself as a casual player in another post and that's pretty apparent. Ghoul is hated by killers too. He's one of the worst things that's happened to this game. Some people actually want skill expression, not free injures and on-demand mobility. If you advocate for killers like that than you're part of the reason survivors need strong perks. Ghoul is why we're on the path we're on.
People on both sides crutch but I'm not saying killers in general crutch, I'm saying you are crutching if you have one match where a survivor perk actually does something and you're complaining about it. Perks are supposed to be useful. SP can be very healthy. An Elusive surv can get the unhook and now both are Eluisve, so they waste a hook-returners time by disappearing. It's the Distortion argument all over again. People running SP are getting unhooks, doing gens, and healing. They're just making themsleves less visible for brief and random intervals.
Still doesnt prove me wrong Mr Survivor Fan 3000. If you want to cry about ghoul like other whiny people than make a post yourself instead of crying here in a post of why I think SP is an unhealthy designed perk. Ghoul is personally my top 5 killers to vers because you have to think when playing against him wich some people can’t … and Playing as is cool because he counters most bs in the game.
On demand mobility is something we don’t want, but then we don’t want half the killers.
And me calling SP an unhealthy perk by design is supposed to be the fault survivors need strong perks somehow?
On the flipside, there are plenty of folks who use no or very little aura reading perks. In which case, they barely even notice SP and it's essentially a wasted perk slot. Perspective matters. I'd prefer to go against survivors running SP than a multitude of other survivor perks.
Finally someone wich actually good arguments. It kinda does little against people not using aura perks. But it still doesn’t mean its design is good since it still promotes a „Kill my team while I hide“ playstyle. There is much more busted stuff on the survivor side yeah but they aren’t designed to let your team die and disappear wich SP kinda is.
Nah, just proxy camp, hook whever came to trade and then go after the person who was just unhooked. It's extremely easy to tunnel someone even if you hook someone in between.
If you hook person a and then person b it’s no tunneling. Tunneling means hooking only the same survivor multiple times in a row wich isn’t the case there and it has nothing to do with the post
Don't think you understand basics of how the game works but you do you.